Looking Back To 2013 From 2023

Ten-Year Flashback // 2023 Edition

2/24/2023

Since 2017, I have been marking significant 10-year anniversaries. For example, 2017 was ten years since my co-op was started and my oldest Michigan cousin was born. 2020 was ten years since I got sick and we found a natural doctor. Things like that. There are good things and not-so-good things. But I thought it would be fun to share the highlights from my life in 2013. (This will be a fun walk down memory lane for me too :)

It's so fun to see what things I was doing ten years ago. I finished driver's ed and tried to learn to play the guitar. That was short lived because I couldn't get past the hurting fingers stage of it. In 2013 I was going to Xtreme Science Saturdays at Lawrence Tech, taking piano lessons, going to art class, and going to the homeschool roller skates.

My brother and I tried to do RoboFest, a robotics competition put on my Lawrence Tech, but we ended up dropping out because we could not get our robot to work. The school year of 2012-2013 was when I did Short Story Club, something I still have such fond memories of.

I started doing CLEP tests in 2013 and our first CLEP Club subject was Psychology. I didn't enjoy the class but I passed the test! They only save your credits for ten years, so that means my credits start expiring this year. That's hard to wrap my brain around.

There was a short time when we went to barn dances at Domino Farms and played Pickleball at the Northville community center. I don't really miss those things, but I did enjoy them because I loved the people I was doing it with.

2013 was one of the hardest years of my life, primarily for a reason I will get to later, but it was also the year that my cousins moved further away from us. And that was the year we had to do Speech Club. There is very little that I had to do in my school career that I didn't like at all but Speech Club was one of those things.

January

SpringHill. I had been waiting for YEARS to be able to go to SpringHill. My dad is a high school youth leader at our church, so I had heard all about the experience from him and I could not wait. This was our yearly winter event and I loved every single time I went.

February

I got my first iPod Touch. It was a 4th generation and I got a fun sticker for it so it looked like a baseball. That thing was a brick, but I was so proud of it.

March

Molly's "surprise" Sweet 16 party. It was supposed to be a surprise but she doesn't like surprises so she figured out most of it and we had to tell her a few things. It was so much fun to plan, especially the Jeopardy game I made.
Zehnder's trip. For our birthdays, our parents would take us somewhere or give us a larger-ticket item (like a Wii). This year, we went to Zehnder's waterpark in Frankenmmuth.
Wrote "Inconceivable". Molly had a songwriting stint and we both love The Princess Bride so we wrote a song with quotes and ideas from the movie! We were having our birthday sleepover, watched the movie, and then wrote a song about it in the middle of the night. The things that happen in the wee hours :)
Winter Jam. I used to go to Winter Jam almost every year. This year had a lot of great artists and I discovered OBB and Capital Kings!

April

State Capital field trip. Our co-op took a field trip to Lansing to see the capital. It was my first, and so far last, trip to my state capital.
Relient K concert! This is a highlight of my LIFE! Relient K is one of my favorite bands and this concert was a dream. I had so much fun, made so many memories, and it was the first time I ate at Fazoli's, which is where I discovered my love of fettuccine alfredo.

June

We went to New York for my cousin's confirmation and the infamous hike up Mt. Beacon happened. I have rarely been so hot and exhausted in my life. The view was great but I don't think it was worth it.
Flamingo-ing. Our youth group used to do this fundraiser where we would stick a "flock" (I think it was 30) pink, plastic flamingos in the yards of our church members and then they would pay to send them to someone else's yard. If I recall correctly, if you wanted to pick the next house, you had to pay, but otherwise we would just take them back. However, everyone paid because it was part of the fun and it was a fundraiser. Planting the flamingos was so fun. It was like being spies!

August

Recorded "Draft Me Maybe". My friend Molly had a studio in her basement. I heard this parody of "Call Me Maybe", done by baseball players before the draft, and I liked it so much that she helped me record it! It was a really fun process.

September

Started helping with MOPS. This was a group for moms that met once a month and our church provided childcare. My grandmothers used to do it together and then one had to stop, so I started helping. I did it for almost ten years and loved playing with all the kids.
My co-op classes from this semester are some of my all-time favorites: World Religions, Write Like the Greats, and World History.
The cutting down of our pine tree in our front yard. My grandfathers cut it down, which is always an experience, since one of my grandfathers does not have a great grasp on saftey :)
Songwriting Club. I am not a songwriter, but I did the group because I will do just about anything if it involves my friend group. And it was fun.
Comerica Park tour. We got to go all around the park, into places many people don't usually get to go! It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I have a photo of myself in the visitor's dugout.
The Tigers were the AL Central champions for the 3rd year in a row!!! Little did I know that we were about to start a very long and painful decade of Tigers baseball.

October

One of the songs Molly wrote and recorded was called "Living In A Facebook World" and she had several of her friends help her make a music video for it. We had a lot of fun with that project!
We found out that my Grammy had mouth cancer in 2013 and she had surgery for it in October. 2023 is ten years cancer-free!!!
Started going to GPD. When I started, this group was a monthly Bible study of teen girls. I knew most of the girls in it and was invited to join. We still meet most months but now we just talk about life and seek wisdom from each other.

November

Miggy won AL MVP. Baseball news is a big deal to my life. Bigger than it should be, if I'm being honest.
Started my first blog! I can't believe I've been blogging for ten years!!!! My first blog was created to share quotes and funny memes with my friends. Yeah... That blog still exists but I mostly just post book reviews on it now. I also had a music blog at one point and a baseball blog (that I still occasionally post stuff on).

December

Furry Fuzz & the Frigid Freezer Frenzy written in Write Like The Greats. Our last week of this class we wrote a group story. I'm pretty sure we went line by line around the table and the result was a masterpiece of hilarity called "Furry Fuzz & the Frigid Freezer Frenzy". You can just imagine. One of the silliest days in co-op history, for sure.
I got my first DSLR camera! It was a FujiFilm Finepix and the lens was permanently attached but it was amazing to me and I learned how to take photos on that camera.
Dad let me wear makeup to church. Up until this point, I was only allowed to wear makeup for very special events, but Christmas 2013 I got to wear it to church! What's funny is that, as excited as I was to wear makeup, I'm really not much of a makeup wearer today. Although, I have decided to start wearing it more.
Our offer on the farm was accepted. Ten years ago this December is when we put an offer on a property and it was accepted. We "bought the farm" :)

As you can see, a lot of amazing things happened in 2013. I'm actually saddened by the fact that I don't remember 2013 for these reasons. But, something else happened in 2013 that is one of the hardest things I've ever faced and was my first "crisis of faith".

Our youth pastor at the time was amazing. I had been waiting to be taught by him for years. He had a program for our youth group where we spent a whole month on a theme and looked at it from a variety of ways. I was challenged in that group and was learning so much. One thing I remember vividly was how he was always asking us questions back when we asked a question. We were challenged to really think. I loved and respected and trusted this man.

In May, he told us that he had a received a call to another church. In June, he told us that he had accepted the call, and in July we had a farewell party for him and he left. The whole experience was very hard for me. Then, in October, our senior pastor had a meeting with all the youth and their parents. I will never forget that day. It was when my world came crashing down for the first time. I was suddenly questioning everything our youth pastor had ever told us. My trust had been broken by someone I looked up to and respected. Someone in authority I should have been able to trust.

I can still picture the room. I remember crying and my parents trying to comfort me. I came home and immediately pulled up Love & The Outcome's song "He Is With Us" and cried while I listened to it. For years, I would cry when I heard that song.

This year changed my life. I struggled with trust issues for years. It was one of those events that rips the rug out from underneath your feet and your life is forever altered because of it. Ironically, that is no longer the most painful event/year of my life. But that is a story for another time.

I enjoyed looking through my journal entries from 2013. It's crazy how some of those things don't seem like they were that long ago. I read about it and I'm back there. I remember the sights, sounds, and feelings. I'm really glad that I have a written record so that I can do things like this.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed learning about my life from ten years ago. I'm curious, do you remember anything from 2013? Did anything major - good or bad - happen to you? Are you a journaler? Does this post make you want to start?